The Working Class and the National Question

Published:PravdaNo. 106, May 10, 1913.

      Published according to thePravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 19,

      pages91-92.Translated:The Late George HannaTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Russiais a motley country as far as her nationalities are
concerned. Government policy, which is the policy of the landowners
supported by the bourgeoisie, is steeped in Black-Hundred nationalism.

Thispolicy is spearheaded against themajorityof the peoples
of Russia who constitute themajorityof her population. And
alongside this we have the bourgeois nationalism of other nations (Polish,
Jewish, Ukrainian, Georgian, etc.), raising its head and trying todivertthe working class from its great world-wide tasks by a
national struggle or a struggle for national culture.

Thenational question must be clearly considered and solved by all
class-conscious workers.

Whenthe bourgeoisie was fighting for freedom together with the people,
together with all those who labour, it stood for full freedom and equal
rights for the nations. Advanced countries, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway
and others, provide us with an example of how free nations under a really
democratic system live together in peace or separate peacefully from each
other.

Todaythe bourgeoisie fears the workers and is seeking an alliance with
the Purishkeviches, with the reactionaries, and is betraying democracy,
advocating oppression or unequal rights among nations and corrupting the
workers withnationalistslogans.

Inour times the proletariat alone upholds the real freedom of nations
and the unity of workers of all nations.

Fordifferent nations to live together in peace and freedom or to
separate and form different states (if that is more convenientfor them), a full democracy, upheld by the working class, is essential. No
privileges for any nation or any one language! Not even the slightest
degree of oppression or the slightest injustice in respect of a national
minority—such are the principles of working-class democracy.

Thecapitalists and landowners want, at all costs, to keep the workers
of different nations apart while the powers that be live splendidly
together as shareholders in profitable concerns involving millions (such as
the Lena Gold fields); Orthodox Christians and Jews, Russians and Germans,
Poles and Ukrainians, everyone who possessescapital, exploit the
workers of all nations in company.

Class-consciousworkers stand forfull unityamong the workers
of all nations in every educational, trade union, political, etc., workers’
organisation. Let the Cadet gentle men disgrace themselves by denying or
belittling the importance of equal rights for Ukrainians. Let the
bourgeoisie of all nations find comfort in lying phrases about national
culture, national tasks, etc., etc.

Theworkers will not allow themselves to be disunited by sugary
speeches about national culture, or “national cultural autonomy”. The
workers of all nations together, concertedly, uphold full freedom and
complete equality of rights in organisations common to all—and that is
the guarantee of genuine culture.

Theworkers of the whole world are building up their own
internationalist culture, which the champions of freedom and the enemies of
oppression have for long been preparing. To the old world, the world of
national oppression, national bickering, and national isolation the workers
counterpose a new world, a world of the unity of the working people of all
nations, a world in which there is no place for any privileges or for the
slightest degree of oppression of man by man.